Japan to Regulate Tech Giants with at Least 40 M. Users

Tokyo, Dec. 10 (Jiji Press)--The government adopted an ordinance Tuesday to regulate technology giants with at least 40 million users per month in Japan under a new law to restrict activities of such companies.

The ordinance will come into force Dec. 19. The Fair Trade Commission will designate companies meeting the standard as subject to the regulation upon their notifications.

U.S. companies Apple Inc. and Google LLC are likely to be the targets of the law.

The new law, designed to promote competition over smartphone apps and other products and services provided by tech giants, passed the Diet, the country's parliament, in June. The law is set to fully enter into force by December 2025 after more details are decided.

Covering the four fields of app stores, operating systems, browsers and search engines, the new law will ban acts of blocking new entrants and giving favorable treatments to companies' own services.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]